Application program developers many times provide related application programs in a software collection called a “suite.” An example of one such suite is OFFICE from MICROSOFT CORPORATION of Redmond, Wash. In some situations, for example, each application program within a common suite may render output to a display device, a printer, or to a file configured to be saved on a storage media. When rendering to a file, many different file formats may be used, for example, Portable Document Format (PDF) and XML Paper Specification (XPS). With conventional systems, each individual application program within a common suite individually renders output in a specified format. Thus, the conventional strategy is to configure each individual application within a common suite with the capability to individually render output to a specified format. This often causes problems because the conventional strategy does not use, for example, a common code library such that each application program within the common suite would not need to be coded from scratch with these rendering features. For example, with the conventional strategy, programmers need to develop separate code for each application program to render output in a given format. This need, for example, tends to increase the suites development cost.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for methods and systems for exporting a document in multiple formats more optimally from a common application program suite. Furthermore, there is a need for exporting a document in multiple formats via a common interface such that the application programs that use the common interface do not themselves render to multiple formats.